It was the first time they had spoken since the shift changes. It had only been one week, but the distance between them was palpable.

"I'm sorry, Gil." Catherine offered, although it did little to ease the discomfort in the pit of her stomach.

"It's okay." He shrugged morosely, swirling his glass and watching the amber liquid spiral around it like a tiny tsunami. "It's my own fault."

"No, this was going to happen regardless of what you did – Ecklie made sure of that." She paused, considering something for a minute. "I must admit, I underestimated Sofia. I thought she'd pander to him."

"Sofia's a good CSI." He mused softly, a frown marring his tired features.

Cath didn't offer an opinion on the blonde. Sofia may not have shopped the team to Ecklie, but that didn't mean they had to trust her.

"You're a good supervisor, Gil." She insisted instead. "You don't deserve this."

"I've dropped the ball on a lot of things." He sighed, sitting back in his seat. "Warrick's gambling, Nick's career ambitions, Sara..."

He trailed off, his attention fading to somewhere only he could see.

"Hey," she sat forward suddenly, her eyes narrowing in thought. "About Sara. How's she doing, with her counselling and everything?"

"She says everything's fine." He shrugged, shaking away whatever memory had temporarily engrossed him. "But we haven't really talked about it. That was one of the reasons Ecklie gave for doing this – because I didn't update her file."

Catherine exhaled. She couldn't deny that something like that would have raised eyebrows.

"Well, these things can get missed." She said diplomatically. "I'm sure Sara would have come to you if there was anything she needed you to know."

"Yeah." He sighed, not quite believing the assertion. "Yeah, she would."

Her hands stilled over the keyboard, waiting with baited breath for the boys to pass. She had deliberately left the lights off, in the hope that nobody would notice her lurking in the computer lab long after her shift had finished.

It worked, and they remained oblivious to her presence as they swept passed the door. She half-smiled at the sight of Greg nestled between Nick and Warrick. It was nice that they were still hanging out, despite the shift changes.

She exhaled with relief and was about to go back to her search, when another figure caught her eye and she froze again.

Catherine watched the boys walk away, her shoulders sagging. Apparently, now that she was the boss lady, she was no longer invited to after-shift drinks.

She was sure the boys didn't mean to exclude her, but it stung non-the-less.

Gil had already gone home, but she had already chewed his ear off once today. Besides, as much as she loved the man dearly, his bad mood probably wouldn't do much to improve her own right now.

She could go to Brass, but somehow the aging detective's company wasn't appealing to her today.

Turning back towards her office, she was surprised to spot movement in the lab behind her. The lights were off, so she had assumed it was empty; but now that she looked closely, she could see someone leaning against a desk in the middle of the room.

Peering closer, she realised that there were actually two people, not one, in the darkened lab and she recognised one of them.

Sara was sat at the computer, and the neat row of empty coffee cups beside her suggested she'd been there for a while. The other person, a woman, remained shrouded in shadow; but Catherine could see from her vantage point that she was tall with curly hair and she was leaning down towards Sara, trapping the young brunette in her seat.

Realising that it was a little strange for her to be loitering in the hallway, spying on her colleagues from a distance, Catherine resigned herself to the fact that she would be going home alone and turned towards the locker room; but something about the scene in the lab bothered her and she turned around again.

The other woman had vanished, leaving Sara alone in the dark room. She was still sat in front of the computer, but her head was bowed, the bright blue screen illuminating the side of her face and causing the faint tear tracks on her cheek to glisten like shooting stars.

Belinda ducked behind the pillar, waiting until the soft footsteps passed. Peering out, she watched with a sad frown as Sara got in her car. For several minutes, her ex didn't start the engine. She just sat, staring blankly out of the windscreen into the morning sun.

Their conversation had been tense, and she knew she had upset the girl with her parting shot; but it needed to be said. Sara was falling apart again, and if she couldn't see it herself, then she needed someone else to point it out – if only she had been willing to listen.

Instead, she had dug her heels in and set her jaw, and told Belinda to stay out of her life. As if she could.

Finally, the headlights lit up and the engine growled, and Sara swung out of her space. At the end of the parking lot, she seemed to hesitate for a second again, before turning left.

Belinda had been to Sara's flat enough times to know that she was not going home. Turning left out of here meant she was going towards the centre of the city.

She was heading towards the Strip – to a bar.

Shaking her head in despair, Belinda ran a hand through her hair.

"I'm sorry, Sara." She sighed to herself. "You're making me do this."

She continued to stir her coffee absently, although it had long-since gone cold. She wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been stood, staring blankly into her garden, because she wasn't seeing any of it anyway.

She was still stood in that hallway, watching Sara cry in the darkness. She had wanted to go in, to see if she was okay, to give her a hug. But she hadn't; despite every maternal instinct in her body screaming at her to do something, she had walked away.

And now she couldn't get that haunting image out of her head.

Belinda sucked in a deep breath, attempting to compose herself. Raising a shaking hand, she rapped lightly on the door and entered at the blunt greeting.

She was not normally one to suffer nerves, but the butterflies in her stomach were doing somersaults at the prospect of what she was about to do.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," she began tentatively. "But there's something I think you need to know about one of your CSIs – Sara Sidle."